Search This Blog

Friday, June 25, 2010

Lacie Starck USB 2.0 External HDD

Every once in a while, I find hardware that functions well, is well designed and looks good too. And that's exactly the combination I found with the Lacie Starck 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive. Some of you might already be familiar with Philippe Starck, the world-famous designer and some of the beautiful works he has created during his career.

This latest cooperation between Starck and Lacie, the well-known hardware manufacturer, has resulted in a line of beautiful devices, including both portable and desktop models in several capacities, starting at 500 GB all the way to the latest 2TB model. This article concerns the desktop version of the hard drive.

The Starck hard drive is a 195 x 115 x 52 mm aluminium enclosure, built a beefy 3mm thick, with a sculpted, polished steel face featuring the Starck logo which is backlit and angled in such a way as to project the logo on the desktop in front of the device. Somewhat pointless, but original in its application:

Another interesting point is that the entire front facade is actually touch-sensitive, with the capacity to recognize both light and hard touches and can be associated with different actions, from mounting hardware to launching applications. The easy to use Lacie Desktop Manager software lets you set these settings easily.

One of the features that most appealed to me was the lack of a cooling fan; the thick aluminium shell is designed as a massive heat sink to keep the drive at a correct operating temperature, with little to no sound. That's a true blessing for audio recording and other uses where external noise is an issue. Like many other external desktop drives, an external power supply is required to operate the drive and this makes less of a portable solution. If this is a concern, the portable version of the Starck hard drives are bus-powered, but with correspondingly smaller capacities.

This is a USB 2.0 drive and most of the tests that have been run by third parties have demonstrated that this drive falls within the range of the faster hard drives currently available. That makes it an great candidate for more demanding users.

If you're looking for a new external drive, this might be the solution for you. Did I mention the great price and pretty universally positive reviews on this family of drives? Sounds like a good deal to me!